The Power of Five Oblivion (2 page)

“I was just on my way,” I said.

“What’s that you’ve got on your hands? Have you hurt yourself?”

I looked down and saw the boy’s blood. I must have got some on myself when I pushed him. “It’s nothing,” I said. “I cut myself.”

“On an apple tree?” They both laughed.

Then Reade turned on me with laser eyes. He was the smaller of the two, thin and pale. He liked hanging around with Dolan because it made him feel important. He was suspicious of everything, like a dog always sniffing at your feet. “Did I hear you talking to someone?” he asked.

“No.”

“I think I did.”

I didn’t know what to say. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the boy scrunched up in the corner and I wondered why I was lying on his behalf. What could I possibly have been doing here that would make these two men leave me alone? My mind scrabbled for an answer and it was given to me by the church. “I was praying,” I said.

The two of them nodded. They both had wives who could have been nuns if they weren’t married … the sort who crossed themselves ten times a day and actually cried when they read the Bible. There were a lot of people in the village like that. They even had prayer meetings on their afternoons off. I smiled and tried to look holy. Somehow, it worked.

“It’s good to pray,” Dolan said. “We need all the help we can get. But it’ll be dark soon. You’d best be home.”

“Absolutely, Mr Dolan.”

They went on their way, the two of them chatting together with their guns slanting across their shoulder blades. I waited until they had gone, then hurried over to the boy. To my astonishment, he had fallen asleep – although it was more likely that shock and exhaustion had knocked him out. I shook him awake.

“Scott…?” he muttered.

“Who is Scott?” I asked.

“My brother…”

“Well, I’m afraid I’m not Scott. I’m Holly. How are you feeling?”

“I don’t know. I’m confused.”

“You haven’t told me your name.”

“You haven’t asked.”

“I’m asking now.”

“It’s Jamie. I’m Jamie Tyler…” He tried to get to his feet but he was too weak and dizzy. “You have to help me,” he said.

“I’ve already helped you. I just stopped you from getting shot. And maybe I’ll help you some more. But you have to tell me where you came from – where you really came from – and who you are. You don’t understand how much trouble I could get into, even for talking to you.”

“OK.” He swallowed and I saw a wave of pain pass across his eyes. “Do you have any water?”

I reached for my backpack and opened it. I’d had a full bottle of water when I started work but now there wasn’t much left. I handed it to him and he emptied it at once, as if he had no idea how valuable it was. The water seemed to revive him a little. He straightened up. The blood was drying in what was left of the afternoon sun. “What country is this?” he asked.

I shrugged. What sort of question was that? “What country do you think it is?” I exclaimed. “It’s England. Where else would it be?”

“Are we near London?”

“I’ve never been to London. I’ve got no idea.” I was rapidly losing my patience. “Tell me what I want to know or I’m going to be on my way and leave you here.”

“No. Don’t do that.” He put out a hand, stopping me. “I’ll tell you what I can. But it won’t help you. You won’t believe me.”

“Try me.” And you’d better get on with it, I wanted to add. The sun was dipping behind the steeple. The gravestones were throwing out shadows that reached ever further. I would already be expected home.

“Is there somewhere else we can talk? Can we go inside?”

“Tell me now.”

But he never did … at least, not then. I hadn’t heard the footsteps behind me. I hadn’t realized that Mike Dolan and Simon Reade had come back until I turned round and saw them, saw them standing there, aiming at Jamie.

“There you are,” Reade said. “I told you something was up.”

“Who is he?” Dolan demanded, then, to Jamie, “Who are you?”

“I’m Jamie.”

“How did you get here?”

Jamie hesitated. I could see him thinking what to say. “I took a bus,” he said, finally.

It was the wrong answer. Almost lazily, Dolan swung his rifle so that the butt crashed into the side of Jamie’s head and he went sprawling. It was the side that had been undamaged. Until that moment anyway. I shouted out but Reade stepped in front of me, blocking my way. Jamie lay still. Dolan stood over him. He turned to me. “You’ve got some explaining to do, Holly,” he said. “But that can come later. Right now you’d better get home.” He nodded at Simon. “Let’s get this boy tied up and locked somewhere safe. And find the Reverend Johnstone. We’re going to have to call an Assembly.”

And that was it. I could only stand there and watch as the two men scooped up the boy and dragged him away.

TWO

Rita and John lived in a modern, three-bedroomed house next to the garage – not, of course, that there was any petrol. The two pumps stood next to each other like metal tombstones, the glass broken and the metal rusted, with Mr and Mrs Esso lying dead beneath. I ran straight past it and didn’t stop until I got home.

I’m going to have to describe the village, or what happened later won’t make any sense.

Basically, it was set on the side of a very slight hill, with the square and the church and the main hall in the middle so there was an upper and a lower village, which were actually quite different from each other. The bit where I lived was mainly modern, consisting of neat brick houses with picture windows and back gardens which had once been full of flowers but that were now planted with vegetables. The bottom half was much older. This was where all the weekenders had lived, but they were all gone now and their houses had been taken over. These were mainly thatched cottages, which caused all sorts of problems with grubs living in the thatch and leaks in the windows, but there were also a couple of rows of pretty terraces that almost vanished behind the wisteria and honeysuckle that still erupted every spring, even though nobody looked after them.

Walking down from the square, you came to a crossroads with the Queen’s Head on one side. The Queen, as everyone called it, was white, half-timbered and still made its own beer. Known as Queen’s Rot, it had been something of a joke in the county: weak, watery and wet was how the locals described it. Nobody had thought that, one day, it would be the only beer you could get. Turn right and you looped back on yourself, coming out on Ferry Lane behind the garage. Turn left and you passed about half a dozen houses before coming to open farmland and the orchards. The village grew wheat, potatoes and sugar beet, depending on the season, and there were pigs and chickens too. Everyone had their own allotment but the rule was that you had to share everything, even though this always led to arguments.

Follow the main road all the way down to the bottom and you came to a quay with a flagpole but no flag, and the river, a dead end in every sense because although the water had once been full of fish, it was now thick and oily and a five-minute swim would put you into hospital – if we had one, which we didn’t – or more probably the grave. In The Queen there was a photograph of the river as it had once been, and even though it was a black-and-white picture it still looked more colourful than it did now. There was no other way out of the village and only one way in. That was its distinguishing feature. A single road ran through the thick woodland that surrounded us on three sides. Over the years, a ring of watchtowers had been constructed so that it was impossible to approach the village without being seen. Big signs warned people that they would be shot if they came too close and I did hear gunfire once or twice in the middle of the day, but as I never went to a village meeting I don’t know how many people tried to get in, how many were turned back or how many died.

We villagers were allowed to come and go. We had passwords that changed every month and that were posted in the old bus shelter which stood as a reminder of the time when there had been buses. September’s password was “samphire”. There were still plenty of rabbits in the wood (although fewer in recent years) and we were encouraged to go out hunting, using bows and arrows to conserve bullets. I’d once brought down a wild deer with a single arrow through its neck and for about a week after that I was the village hero. Everyone had something nice to say about me. But then the last scrap of meat was eaten and the bones were boiled down to the last bowl of soup and things quickly went back to normal.

Anyway, there you have it. A village of about three hundred people with a dense wood at one end and a dead river at the other. We were isolated. And we all knew that was probably the reason we were still alive.

Rita was waiting for me on the other side of the front door and she knew immediately from my face that something was wrong. She was stick-thin with long, silver hair and eyes that had retreated into caves. When she was angry, she looked like a witch. Now she was just scared, although as usual she was doing her best not to show it. Rita kept her emotions locked up like her best china and only brought them out for special occasions.

“What is it, Hermione?” She was the only one who called me that. “What’s happened? Why are you late?”

“I met someone…” I hesitated.

“Who did you meet?”

“It was a boy. But he wasn’t from the village.”

She stared at me. “What do you mean?”

“He just appeared at the church. He said his name was Jamie. I’d never seen him before.”

“So what did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything. I talked to him.”

Rita’s shoulders sagged. It was a very deliberate movement. She did that to show she was annoyed. Then she turned on her heel and hurried into the kitchen, where John and the last member of our little household – George – were having their tea.

I don’t need to tell you a lot about John. He never said very much. He was a small, white-haired man – shorter than Rita – who spent most of his time sitting there with a sort of half-dazed smile on his face. He wasn’t stupid. I think he just didn’t want to get involved. George was another matter. He was eighteen, three years older than me, and like me he had no parents. He worked at the village bakery and you could tell that just by looking at him because he was quite fleshy and he was always covered in a thin coating of flour. He had blond hair, which he never combed, and blue eyes. They were his best feature. Nobody thought George had very much to offer, but I knew him better than anyone and if I’d had to choose one person in the village to stick up for me, it would have been him.

The two of us had grown up as brother and sister, looked after by Rita and John. George was very shy and always seemed to be uncomfortable when I was around. I sometimes thought that when Rita and John died, we’d simply take over the house and end up living together … and well we might have if things hadn’t turned out the way they did.

“There’s been a stranger in the village,” Rita announced as I followed her into the room.

“A stranger?” John looked up from his porridge – or whatever slop he was eating.

“I found him in the churchyard,” I said.

“Where did he come from?”

“I don’t know. He was just there.” I wasn’t going to tell them about the door. That still didn’t make any sense to me.

“So who was he?” George asked. “What was his name?”

“He said his name was Jamie. I didn’t talk to him much. He was just a boy about the same age as me. And he had a funny accent. I don’t think he was English.”

“And you raised the alarm…?”

This was the big question. Everyone waited for me to answer.

“I didn’t have a chance to. Simon Reade and Mike Dolan found us together. They grabbed Jamie and they sent me home.”

“They found you talking together? And you hadn’t raised the alarm?” Rita stared at me.

I nodded miserably.

“You don’t realize how much trouble you’re in. You broke the first rule of the village. The moment you saw him, you should have called for help.”

“I know. But he was so young. And he was hurt. He was covered in blood.”

“He’ll be worse than that when the Council have finished with him.”

“You shouldn’t be angry with her,” George said. He had a way of talking, slow and deliberate, that always made you feel he’d thought very carefully about what he was about to say. “Holly didn’t help this boy come here and it wasn’t her fault she saw him first. And if he was hurt, it was only right she should try to help him.”

“Simon and Mike won’t see it that way.”

“They’ll try to make trouble. They always do. It makes them feel important.” George got up from the table and fetched the saucepan. “You’d better have something to eat,” he said. “We left you some stew.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You should eat anyway.”

I did as I was told. It was getting dark and Rita nodded at George, who got out a couple of candles and lit them. I would have preferred an electric light. The little flames somehow emphasized the darkness rather than illuminating it. I could feel the world outside and all sorts of unnamed troubles pressing in on me. But there was no reason to waste a battery. They were only kept for emergencies.

There was a knock at the door. John went out and I expected him to return with Simon Reade or Mike Dolan, so I was relieved when it was Miss Keyland that he showed into the room.

Anne Keyland was one of those people you couldn’t help liking. She was about sixty, but young with it, full of energy, striding around the place in her yellow wellington boots. She had lost a lot of weight recently and there were rumours that she was ill, but even if that had been the case, she would never have admitted it. She still ran the village school. She was also deputy chair of the Council. I guessed at once that was the reason she was here.

She gave me a hug. “Holly. Trust you to get into trouble! A stranger in the village and you have to be the one who finds him. You’re going to have to tell me everything he said to you, my dear. How did he get past the watchtowers? What was he doing at the church? Where had he come from?”

“I’ll tell you everything,” I exclaimed. I was just glad it was her. Whatever rules I’d broken, I knew she’d be on my side.